Romanian entry 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days has walked away with the top prize in the 60th annual Cannes Film Festival.
It was the critics film of choice, describing the story as one that is powerful yet simply told. It is a rareity for the Cannes 9-member jury and the critics to agree on who should pick up the Palme d’Or. ‘4 Months’, which is directed by Cristian Mungiu, is centred on two University students living in the later years of communism in a small Romanian town, dealing with an unwanted pregnancy.
There we also few complaints regarding the winners of the other prizes.
The Grand Prix runners up prize went to Naomi Kawasee’s The Mourning Forest, a Japanese movie about mourning and grief.
Winner in the Best Director category went to Julian Schnabel for The Diving Bell and Butterfly – a movie based on the true story a paralyzed French journalist who managed to write a book using only one eye lid to communicate. Julian has already had one of his movies pick up an Oscar nod for his 2000 release Before Night Falls.
Is Cannes losing its roots though?
This year we saw stars such as Brad Pitt and George Clooney making their way down the red carpet to showcase Oceans 13! Maybe some people will disagree but to me Cannes used to be about giving new European talent their big break, but now it seems dominated by big-budget American releases which we pretty much all already know about. Hollywood has turned it into just another industry shindig.
3 Comments
I didn’t know Cannes was created to give European filmamkers exposure but it is nice to know. So it must be some cruel irony that the same big American movie moguls who they feel crippled the European market are now coming to dominate it’s most prestigious show. I mean, you never see the Europeans dominating, or even having a significant showing, at the Oscars.
Cannes used to be a stuffy European affair where only “art” films or serious dramas got featured. But now star power is turning it into just another obligatory stop for the studios to make while pimping their next flick. It might as well be a cocktail party now.
Won’t be long before the big-budget Summer special effects flicks are getting featured. When I see Michael Bay’s shit getting shown at Cannes then I’ll know they’ve completely sold-out.
The fact that so many American Blockbusters find their way to Cannes, shows how much importance they give to the European market. I mean it’s not that those movies will win a price, they only come for publicity reasons, as Cannes is the most important film festival in Europe (probably even in the world). We should be happy that they come, as it shows us that European cinema gets more and more attention and importance worldwide.
American movies being shown at Cannes don’t help the European market, it diminishes it. A festival with a a mostly, if not all, European field helps European filmamkers. Hollywood’s invasion only helps Hollywood, no one else.
And when I was talking about “the European market” I was talking about European filmmakers, not European filmgoers. American studios have always wanted European dollars but have NEVER wanted European competition. Fellini, Bergman etc used to be big in the 60’s but now they’re gone and granted the quirkiness and oftentimes stupid style European films is to blame, but so is the economic-aggression of Hollywood.
I sincerely doubt is movies like Clerks 2, Oceans 13 et. al. do the European filmmakers any good. And the European filmmaker used to be what Cannes was all about.